at the sign of The Pink Pig

At The Galleries: Larry Rivers, Lucien Freud

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  May 29, 2012]

At Tibor de Nagy, a rather disappointing, if undeniably colorful, set of paintings by Larry Rivers from the last two decades of his career.

The gallery has long had a close association, of course, with the New York schools of painters and poets, and Rivers - a man with a foot in both camps, studying with Hans Hoffman and collaborating with Frank O'Hara - is at home here.  Always a friend of figuration, this period sees him wryly celebrating celebrity itself: there are portraits of Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire, as well as artists like Mondrian, Matisse, and Balthus.

DeKooning And David Smith

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  December 22, 2011]

I finally took myself off to the predicatbly rewarding Willem De Kooning retrospective at MoMA.  Massive in scale, more or less orderly in layout, it's the one DeKooning show you'll need to see.

Although many of the paintings are familiar from the continuous barrage of abstract expressionist shows we've enjoyed in New York over the past ten years, seeing them hung together makes a difference.

Peter Hujar: Three Lives Worth Viewing

 [New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  December 6, 2011]

Make a note among your social engagements to trek over to Chelsea before Christmas.  Peter Hujar's brief but concentrated photographic record of his life, and the lives of two friends and lovers, is worth your attention.

Hujar was a commercial and art photographer specializing in portraits.  He died from an AIDS-related condition in 1987, aged 53.  Some may know his photograph, "Candy Darling on her Deathbed" from the cover of Anthony & The Johnsons' I Am A Bird album.

The Didactic Impulse: German Expressionism At MoMA

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  July 4, 2011]

A busy couple of days in the run up to the holiday weekend.  I attended an event to save the seals (more later); I ran over to Poet's House to survey their annual showcase of poetry books published nationwide; I got to bed at 2.43 am following a cabaret performance at D-Lounge; and I scrambled to MoMA to see "German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse."

Well it closes July 11, so there was no more delaying.

The Tender Tears of Laurel Nakadate

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  June 27, 2011]

For once, let me not completely fail to review an exhibit before it closes.  Okay, this is an imperfect attempt, because you just missed Laurel Nakadate's "365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears" at Lesley Tonkorow.

But I save the day - because many of the photos from that piece, together with an enormous overview of the rest of the artist's practice, runs at MoMA PS 1 through August 8.  Get over there.

Stricken: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  July 27, 2011]

Stricken.  By what?  By journal is silent, except to say that I was.  Four or five days so I expect it was just on of those miserable summer colds.  Not much, therefore, to report on what happened to me in the persistent June rain ten years ago.  A bit of eating and gallery-going nevertheless.

The Whitney and the Frick, in any case,  ignoring forked lighting, for Calder, Van der Rohe, El Greco and Roni Horn.

An Art Apology

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  June 14, 2011]

Anyone would think I don't look at pictures any more.  In fact, I have managed to miss some promising exhibits recently, and some I've seen I haven't had time to write about.

In the first category, Picasso's guitars at MoMA.  In the second, the great upheaval.

A Note From Coney Island

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  June 5, 2011]

I thought we were all supposed to be mourning the closure of the attractions, the final collapse of Ruby's, the encroachment of fat-cat development.  I guess we have to do it all over again next winter.

But Ruby's Old Time was still open for business, and as far as I could see so was pretty much everything else.

Otterness, Parlá, Pollock, Etc.: Around the Galleries

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  March 28, 2011]

The good news is that my remarks on Tom Otterness's Marlborough Gallery show do not come too late.  It was set to close on March 26, but has been extended through April 7, according to the gallery's website.  Hurry to see its edgy delights.

The delights are obvious; the edge perhaps more apparent than in his previous works.

Continue reading for Pollock, Kelly, Malevich and Parlá.

Frumpy Classicism At The Guggenheim

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid:  January 10, 2011]

Too late to recommend or counsel against this show, which is closing as I write, but perhaps some of you saw it and might be interested in my brief reflections.  And firstly, what an unpromising subject, aesthetically speaking.  Without diving deep into the press materials, the pretext for this typically large and wide-ranging exhibit seems to be the view that European artists, between the wars, derived comfort from the revival and use of certain tropes from classical art and architecture.  The fragments served to shore them, as it were, against the ruins of the modern world.